That's the point :).
541 karma · joined January 29, 2014
I went off and did my own startup for 2.5 years, and then wound up crawling back to corporate America.
I believed in 'following my passion' when I left, and I definitely wasn't finding that at Google. After all, my last project there was building automated tools to serve legal requests for Google+ - not exactly what you have in mind when you join.
A couple of things I wish I had known when I left:
- Following your passion is bunk. Most people don't understand themselves well enough to know what they're passionate about. There are always going to be parts of jobs that you don't like, even when you're working on your own stuff. I actually found the percentage of dislike to increase when I was doing my own stuff - I had to do sales and marketing for my own company. I never had to worry about that at Google.
- A lot of people try to find some larger meaning for what they're working on. I always wanted to work on 'something really important', and I wasn't finding that at Google. Problem is there just aren't that many 'really important' things. Even if you work on phenomenally successful products like the iphone, you could argue that product did not make the world much better in any meaningful way. What's worse, 80% of software developers spend their careers making glorified CRUD apps, or worse.
But this problem goes away if you just drop your need for doing something important. Nowadays, I don't care about the larger meaning of what I'm doing. I don't get hung up on that mental argument. I just take immense pleasure in the craft of producing software. Writing code is wonderful - you get to solve puzzles all day and learn new things. If that code changes the world, then great, but I don't 'need' it anymore.
- Pay - quitting Google cost me 1/2 a million dollars. I didn't make squat in my startup over the next 2.5 years. When I went looking for a job (I'm in Colorado), I realized that Google pays in the 90th percentile, and it was hard to find companies who would match my former salary.
So in retrospect, I probably would have stayed and just worked on side projects to satisfy my curiosity while I continued to make bank at my day job.
There are many, many wonderful things about Google - the people are all super smart and competent, the internal systems rock, HR 'just works', things like expense reports aren't a pain in the ass, and you can go off and explore awesome internal technologies.
Yes, you might spend some time working on 'boring' stuff, but that's going to be true at any job.
Anyway, that's just me, and I have a ton of perspective. I never would have found that perspective if I hadn't quit, so everyone has to follow their own journey.
Good luck.
[1] https://thinkfaster.co/2017/05/big-data-with-golang-instead-...
For me, I've always had high anxiety. OCD is essentially anxiety when you boil it down to its core. That means I carry around a great deal of stress, sometimes to the point where I can feel it in my stomach all day every day.
3-5 days of meditation makes this feeling go away. I've seen studies that show your cortisol drops after 3-5 days of doing it for 20-30 mins a day.
So to answer your question: I notice it a lot when I stop. I still fall off on the habit periodically, but I see the benefits shortly after I start again.
Some of the benefits for me: * Less Stress. * I make better eye contact with people because I'm not anxiously looking away. * I listen to my employees (and everyone) better because I'm not so tempted to interrupt them when they're speaking. * My body feels better - any pain or injuries I have get better. * My focus during the workday is dramatically improved. I don't get distracted nearly as easily.
But for someone who has less natural anxiety, I can imagine not having as many benefits. So use the classic test: if it helps you, keep doing it. If you don't see any benefit, then don't bother. Don't do it just because you think you ::should::.
For the record, my way out of this happened to be psychological, but that doesn't mean I'm against medication. It just didn't happen to be my experience, so I can't comment on it. I try to avoid topics I don't know anything about.
Going into this thing, I really thought it was all word of mouth. After all, that's how Google exploded.
And I didn't realize that 99/100 people might not like what you built, but that 1/100 is enough to support a successful product.
But you need sales and marketing to find that 1/100.
In my case at Goog, I started off with a small equity grant, vesting over 4 years. So after the first year, I had equity vesting every quarter.
Assuming you do ok/well, you'll get refresher grants every single year after that.
Fast forward 3 or 4 years, and you have 4 separate grants vesting every single quarter.
This quickly adds up to 50+K a year, and that's where these numbers come from, even if they're not reflected in your base pay.
But it's always relative. If someone who does the same thing as you at a similar competence level, and they make 2-3X what you make, naturally you're going to feel agitated.
My guess is it's a net loss for the org in most cases. The exception being if you sit there for days.